The Burley Bowl was a postseason

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...

bowl game In North America, a bowl game is one of a number of post-season college football games that are primarily played by teams belonging to the NCAA's Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). For most of its history, the Division I Bowl Subdivis ...

played from 1945 through 1956. It was held each year on Thanksgiving Day in

Johnson City, Tennessee Johnson City is a city in Washington, Carter, and Sullivan counties in the U.S. state of Tennessee, mostly in Washington County. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 71,046, making it the eighth largest city in Tennessee. John ...

, at the city's Memorial Stadium, which was demolished in July 2010. The game was part of an annual two-day

tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...

festival, with the name of the bowl coming from Burley tobacco. Like some other postseason match-ups of the era, such as the

Grape Bowl The Grape Bowl was a postseason college football bowl games, bowl game played in 1947 and 1948. It was held at the Grape Bowl stadium, in Lodi, California. Both games featured the College of the Pacific (now Pacific Tigers football, University of ...

, Glass Bowl, and

Optimist Bowl The Optimist Bowl was a postseason college football bowl game played in 1946. It was held at Public School Stadium (later known as Robertson Stadium), in Houston. The game was sponsored by the Houston Optimist Club, through agreement reached wit ...

, results are listed in

NCAA The National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) is a nonprofit organization that regulates student athletics among about 1,100 schools in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. It also organizes the athletic programs of colleges an ...

records, but the games were not considered NCAA-sanctioned bowls. The inaugural game was held on November 29, 1945. That day was the last (and fifth) Thursday of November, which was observed as Thanksgiving in Tennessee that year, despite

President Truman Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...

proclaiming the holiday to be the fourth Thursday of the month.

Game results

Game records

Most appearances

''Only teams with more than one appearance are listed.''

Notes

* NCAA records list the date of the first Burley Bowl as "1-1-1946", which is inconsistent with contemporary newspaper reports.

Game results

Game records

Most appearances

Notes

See also

References

Further reading